Sunday, March 31, 2013

Facile sloganeering begins all wars...

"The Bomber Always gets Through" started WWII, quickly followed by "The Battleship Always gets Through" and "The Tank Always gets Through".

To the smart money of the Age of Modernity, these modern mechanical Goliaths seemed surely destined to kick the shit out of any puny David that chanced to stand in their way.

It would seem to be awfully hard to stop an armoured, multi-turretted 'fortress of the air' like the 65 ton B-29 bomber : but in 1945, 2 ton Zero fighters were still dropping them out of the skies like flies.
And in 1945, mammoth 65 ton Tiger II tanks were being stopped cold by 130 lb youths armed only with shoulder fired bazookas.

And in 1945, 75,000 ton super battleships still could be sunk by 750 ton submarines.

If this were a boxing match, its all rather like the heavy weight champion of the world being knocked out stone cold by some four year old wearing her first pair of training gloves.

So, with all due apologies to that famous chicken in that long ago Canadian Parliament chamber: